NonEqbSK · Effective field theories for non-equilibrium many-body systems
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-09-01 → 2023-08-31
- EU contribution
- €175,572
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Effective field theories for non-equilibrium many-body systems
The overarching goal of this research project was to develop new effective field theories with non-equilibrium systems accounting for the effects of dissipation and stochastic fluctuations. Macroscopic processes that we see around us typically involve a very large number of constituents and feature dissipation and loss of tractable information. Reconciling these characteristics with a formally consistent mathematical framework has been an open challenge in physics and is what this project aimed to make progress towards. The new effective field theories developed in this research project will help us make better or more predictable models of nonequilibrium systems that we see around us in nature and will have far-reaching consequences for various areas of physics and engineering. The concrete objectives of the project were to develop effective field theories for systems nearing a phase transition, for active systems with an intrinsic source of heat and broken symmetries, and for fluids confined between physical boundaries.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Non-equilibrium phenomena continue to challenge our understanding of many-body systems appearing in nature. Macroscopic processes are generally irreversible due to dissipation. Reconciling this irreversibility with the unitarity of quantum mechanics has been one of the long-standing puzzles in physics. To date, we lack a systematic framework to account for stochastic thermal noise in many-body dynamics that becomes increasingly important as we leave equilibrium. The situation is particularly dire in systems that naturally operate far from equilibrium, such as fluids near a critical point, actively driven fluids, or fluids fluctuating in a confined volume, as the validity of existing models is limited.The goal of this proposal is to investigate these systems in the context of the newly developed Schwinger-Keldysh framework for non-equilibrium effective field theories. The new framework offers a systematic understanding of thermal fluctuations and dissipation starting from an action principle, and is suitable for constructing models describing non-equilibrium phenomena in many-body systems. During this fellowship, I will develop effective field theories specialised to the non-equilibrium systems mentioned above, and investigate their repercussions for observed phenomena. These results will have far-reaching impact in the fields of high-energy physics and condensed matter physics, especially concerning the hunt for the QCD critical point at heavy-ion colliders, modelling of living systems in biophysics, and biophysical membranes. This work will also provide insights into the broader physical problems such as the emergence of dissipation from microscopic principles and the quantum nature of gravity via the AdS/CFT correspondence.The increased visibility that I will gain in the scientific community due to these results, along with the training and experience I will obtain during this fellowship, will help me establish myself as an independent scientist in the future.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM · AmsterdamCoordinatorNetherlands
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union